In other news …

Not least amused that somehow I end up regretting almost every single occasion on which I didn’t listen to my parents, I decided that the pros of taking a Mandarin course outweighs salvaging whatever little dignity I have left from refusing to swallow a half-decade long grudge against Chinese school.

At the moment I’m looking at Mandarin Level 4 for $315 over ten weeks. I’m not entirely sure whether Jez was serious when he expressed interest in joining me, but if he is, the good news is that being currently enrolled in a USyd course isn’t a prerequisite.

Description of Level 4 is as follows:

“Level 4: This level assumes you have completed approximately 95 hours of prior study with us or done the equivalent study elsewhere. While this is not a fluency class by any means it assumes you have good basic conversational skills. Students should be able to use present, past and future tenses and make coherent simple conversation about basic topics. You should be able to express feelings, opinions and be able to get around reasonably confidently in the country of language origin – still making mistakes and asking people to repeat themselves occasionally. The teaching method is still structured around grammar and on expanding your vocabulary.”

I think it’s safe to say that us background speakers are okay with the above.

Awaiting comment from the boy, who is probably busy smashing up a few windows in frustration of having a bad PVP week.

Drink triple, see double, act single

My conscious is telling me that I should probably stay away from Jez.

Saturday as planned: short sleep-in, then seeing as we have the entire day free, study.
Saturday as it happened: sleep-in till 11 am, study (on his behalf) for about an hour. Sex. Study (on his behalf) for about 30 minutes. Sex. Sleep. Leave for dinner at my house.

Sunday as planned: I come over after work and study.
Sunday as it happened: I come over. Sex. Sleep. Dinner.

Monday as planned: I meet Jez at UNSW after work for lecture, where he’ll be listening intently and I’ll be writing notes on Parkinson’s Disease.
Monday as it happened: I skip work, come over planning to study. Sex. Sleep. Eat. Home.

I suspect that if completely free from obligations, our lives would simplify into three activities. Try and guess what they are.

Wintery

So, Summer’s over. I find myself spending increasing amounts of time shivering.

Changing seasons always makes me nostalgic. When Winter begins I reminisce about every Winter for as long as I can remember, from the fleecy school pants I wore in year 3 to the sanctuary that was Jez’s electric blanket in the room that froze in Winter and baked in Summer.

In Winter during first year ar uni, I kept wearing this pink-and-brown jumper I found at the markets for $5 with straight-leg jeans from China, and wore my hair short and increasingly orange.

Urgh.

Dippity Dip

Grill platter for two … $28.90
Bread and dips … $23.90

We could have bought two bowls of ramen; or two 2-piece feeds from KFC; or two mains and drinks from Pepper Lunch; or a George’s seafood mix grill; or like 50 Puffies; or 9 plates of sushi on sushi-Tuesday for the price of just the dips.

You’re lucky you’re so hot in bed.

Bleeding Love

I’m way behind the times – I’ve just discovered Leona Lewis. Frig sent me one of her songs awhile ago and I thought it was quite good, except I was like “who the hell is she?” and now I realise she’s the girl who sings Bleeding Love.

We went home early last night but Craig’s incessant calling dragged our tired arses back out to the city. I wish Jez’s friends would, for just one occasion, drink somewhere other than Maloney’s. I suppose value overrides ambience, because the latter Maloney’s has none.

There are also several Maloney’s-related memories I’d rather not retain:

• Dropping my then-new phone into the toilet
• Getting kicked out for being too loud
• Standing at the bar behind a couple of guys who got into a fight, one of them painfully stomping on my foot. My Tony Biancos retain evidence of damage
• Losing spectacularly in pool, although this doesn’t bother me as much as the above, and I can’t recall the identities of my opponents or partner

Maloney’s also has a dero crowd. We spotted a few glitzy-dress-clad boulders last night, one of them asking Lillu to join their table. How could he say no?

Oh, and a couple of younger Fortians that didn’t look a day over 13; a random man with a dirty long ratty who I think tried to get us to go to Space but I could be wrong because he was rather incoherent; a girl whose short dress exposed her vagina to the world; an eerily familiar-looking dude who I suspect I may have met at a club; a guy who was expelled from Fort Street for sexually assaulting a Japanese exchange student; my ex who tried to fuck me on the first date; and a bunch of older dero Fortians.

DID I MENTION THERE WERE BOULDERS?

There was also a guy who bore an uncanny resemblance to Joe Nguyen, but that’s just for interest.

On our way home a mentally-unstable elderly serenaded us on the bus.

Jez kept saying I’m good to him for putting up with nights like these, but I had fun out of being amused. And I suppose Jez’s friends are pretty awesome. My friends are just as awesome if not better, but Jez thinks he’s above us.

Anyway, to their amusement I spent the whole night chewing glasses of ice. I asked Jez to fetch me some lemons too but he refused. I asked Philip too, but I don’t think he understood me, because he just waved his arms around and started singing Ne-yo.

Jez came over tonight to cook for my parents. We picked shepherd’s pie and I picked berry custard, which had a fancy name but I forget. Unfortunately the shepherd’s pie recipe assumed that we had lamb leftovers and gravy from the previous day’s roast. Obviously lamb roast could not have been a product of sitting in a seedy bar gawking at fat chicks, so throwing together dill, thyme, bay leaf, salt and olive oil, I bumrushed the faux-leftover lamb. It was spectacular. The pie, however, tasted too much of barbeque sauce (which superseeded Worchestershire, since my hubby is a picky prat). My parents liked it though.

After pouring the first attempt of custard down the toilet, we gave it another shot. The mixture burnt much too easily that even on low heat and constant mixing, we couldn’t avoid a layer of scorched sugar on the bottom, which unfortunately after further beating was folded into the otherwise smooth custard. Jez didn’t have dessert but I tried a few spoonfuls. It wasn’t as good as I expected.

Lessons to be learnt:

• Burnt milk is extremely clingy on all surfaces
• When you have a punnet of raspberries, just eat them
• Stairs are fun

Spit

Beijing etiquette experts are making a huge fuss over unacceptable social behaviour displayed by the community, mainly spitting. “I think Beijing is actually much more progressive than other cities in China, where you can still almost drown in spit.” – says Alex Pearson, a British expat who has lived in the city since ‘92.

This might be hard to believe, but on my last visit to Beijing, the amount of public spitting fell short of leaving any impressions. Neither was I close to drowning in saliva in Jinan, a much smaller and less metropolitan city than Beijing.

To prepare the city for the ‘08 Olympics, the government is actually actively handing out etiquette flyers and distributing posters discouraging the community to spit in public. How do they kid themselves that they can break the habits of 15 million people in less than 12 months?

It’s not a spitting problem. It’s a population problem. Just as many people spit in Sydney. Walk the length of George St and pay close attention to the area opposite Town Hall. What do you find? A lot of spit. In fact I’ve actually be spat on. We’re just as dirty.

I mean okay, I don’t condone spitting, but what Beijing’s attempting to do in preparation for the Olympics is laughably unrealistic.

Why doesn’t China have any backbone? Even if spit was more plentiful than it actually is, why can’t they stand up and say “welcome … to the country of SPIT”? Why does preparing for the arrival of foreigners have to involve inflicting pain upon the locals? Training girls in etiquette schools to smile by forcing them to hold chopsticks between their teeth for hours and issuing $8 fines for spitting in public seems a tad sycophantic and OTT. One of the girls training for presenting medals said “I’ll feel very proud to represent my country in front of the whole world”. No honey, the bloke on whose neck hangs the medal you’ve just handled is representing his country. You’re the anonymous little Chinese volunteer that nobody will pay any attention to or remember save your parents who would have taped that moment and watched it a thousand times over without knowing who the athlete was or what event he or she had participated in because the centre of attention is their pride and joy donning ugly pink flight-attendant-esque uniform smiling like she has chopsticks between her teeth.

Chillax, and fire whoever designed the uniforms.

Obviously I have a lot of anger tonight.

Home Bittersweet Home

Well it looks like I’ll be saved the hassle of fabricating torchlit bushwalks and rafting adventures that never were.

I think I’ll keep mum about the details.

The point is, I’m home.

Shouted conversation between girl #1 and Mirjana this morning:

girl #1: Last Thursday the pharmacist here gave me these eyedrops (Visine for Red Eyes) for my sore eyes, but these aren’t actually for sore eyes. They’re for red eyes and mine weren’t red at all.
Mirjana: I’m afraid you’ll have to come back on Thursday and speak to Jim about that.
girl #1: Can’t you help me with it?
Mirjana: Unfortunately not, because I wasn’t here when he gave it out so it’s best that you come back to speak with Jim. [1]
girl #1: Is that how you run things here?
Mirjana: says something along the lines of [1]
girl #1: So you’re saying it’s my fault?
Mirjana: No I’m not saying that at all. says something along the lines of [1]
girl #1: So what, you can’t make any decisions, is that right?
Mirjana: says something along the lines of [1]
girl #1: I don’t want to come back on Thursday! snake shoots out of girl’s mouth and bites everyone in the eyeballs

I stood on the side debating silently whether I should intervene and suggest that we give the girl something for her sore eyes in the meantime, but decided against it.

Then it got me thinking – how would I run a pharmacy? Jim, John, Mirjana and Harsha are constantly at loggerheads with each other over orders and layout and whatnot. I admit my retail management knowledge is laughably limited, but from what I’ve picked up at work during the last six months I have some ideas I might want to implement when and if I own my very own little pharmacy.

Depending on demographics, multilingual pharmacy assistants will be preferred, although it’s essential that they are fluent in English. I’m okay with accents, as long as it doesn’t impact their coherence. I won’t be picky about whether or not they’re pharmacy students, because as the pharmacist, dispensing and paperwork are my responsibilities and nobody else’s. That being said it could be true that pharmacy students are more dedicated because they have more incentive. Anyway, neither will I be picky about gender. A little workplace flirting could make things interesting.

I won’t stock the following items:

- Shoe-laces
- Miniature key for easy removal of earrings
- Pansy bath items from Innoxa that pretend to be sophisticated gift sets. I’ve never seen anyone buy them
- Shoe-shine
- Cheap-looking, badly coloured plastic travel cases for soaps, toothbrushes, etc. I’m sure I can find better quality equivalents
- Ombrello hair accessories
- Lingerie of bad taste. See Greenwood

I will, however, follow Greenwood’s footsteps in keeping:

- L’Occitane
- Jurlique
- L’Oreal
- Covergirl
- Natio
- Maxfactor
- Propoline by Apivita (though this is just for the novelty factor)

And perhaps add:

- Napoleon
- Bloom
- Clinique
- I wish I could add MAC but I don’t think they do pharmacies

I’ll make sure that there is a storage room large enough for all excess stock. I won’t have any spares sitting on the top- or bottom-most shelf cluttering up the place. If storage size is insufficient, I’d either cut down size of shopfront or reduce number of lines. In terms of layout, the one thing I must have is products lined neatly along the shelves – no turning boxes on their side to conserve space, no displaying different products in front of or behind each other, no items on the floor or the edges of gondolas where they shouldn’t be.

Like Greenwood, registers will be spacious and have those gutter slot things for candy and gum and pocket tissue and whatever other impulse-buys people impulsively buy. However, the countertop will remain free from all objects other than monitor, keyboard, EFTPOS machine and printer. I’ll also glue the sign-pad on so it doesn’t shift all over the place.

There will be a single notebook in which people will write down details such as customers and staff owing payment, contact numbers to call when special orders come in, etc. There will also be a lost-and-found box for credit cards, keys, repeat forms and others. At the moment we’re sticking all of these along the wall in the form of hundreds of bits of paper for the world to see. It’s disgraceful. A notice-board might be cute, but definitely only in private view of staff in the dispensary or storage room. And this isn’t even a notice-board! I should make that suggestion next time I’m at work.

I’m still undecided about the floor. Tiles give a toilet-esque look I’d rather avoid and carpets dirty too easily. So I’m thinking timber. I bet nobody has timber floors in their pharmacy. I also bet it’s hella expensive.

Let’s move to the dispensary. First of all I’d like it to be in the vicinity of the cash registers. This would save us from the hassle of calling people back because they’ve received their medications from the former and walked out without pausing to pay at the latter. I’m quite happy with the maximum-surface-area shelves we’ve got going at the moment, although more space would definitely be welcome.

Assuming that I’m successful in hiring workers who are computer-literate, all contact details of staff, reps, delivery, orders, etc will be stored electronically. A printed copy will probably be available in case of erm, blackout. There won’t be, however, any Harsha-ish cluttering of business cards and scrap bits of paper with random phone number scrawled and crossed out and scrawled again.

One shelf will be dedicated to handbooks, manuals, TI (if I fancy keeping the volumes at work) and other paperwork such as credit books, profitunities books, planograms, invoice records, etc.

Storage, not cardboard, boxes will be used for old scripts and receipts.

A large filing cabinet will be needed for statements and invoices. Somebody (possibly me) will be in charge of ensuring that all papers are filed under the correct alphabet (i.e. DHL deliveries does not, under any circumstances, go under C. I don’t care if the D folder is glued shut. Pry it open).

LOTS will be the dispensing program.

The following kitchen utilities will be available to staff:

- Refrigerator separate from the medical refrigerator (which by the way will accomodate medications arranged neatly in alphabetical order)
- Freezer
- Microwave
- Kettle
- Jaffle-maker
- Coffee machine
- Toaster
- Blender’s going a bit far, no? Okay, scrap blender
- Chopping board

There will most definitely be a uniform. Only the pharmacist, i.e. me, is allowed white blouses. Therefore under no circumstances are any of you allowed to wear white. However, if I wanted to dress in a colour other than white, I may do so but I will advise you beforehand in case the colour of my choice coincides with your uniform, in which case you’ll wear a different colour. Capice?

I’m thinking a nice, Tiffany blue paired with grey bottoms. Preferably high-waisted pencil skirts. Black pointed flats, black stockings. It’s been a long battle, but I’ve finally accepted the fact that nobody working in a pharmacy can wear heels on a long-term basis. Boys will wear pretty much the same stuff – blue shirt, grey pinstriped pants (see Jez’s sexy grey work pants) because solid grey is too school-uniform, black shoes. If you dare turn up in black sneakers, I’ll acetylcholinesterase your coffee.

Everyone will wear name-badges. Not the blank-card-with-plastic-clip-ons. Proper, metal, engraved-and-inked badges. If your name is ugly I’ll give you a new one.

That’s all for now!

P.S. Jez obviously wrote the last entry. And for the record, he tried to video me while I was blindfolded but his phone was low on batteries. He told me this later. Sheepishly.